


The Haunted Bookshop

by owlbsurfinbird



Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Lewis Fright Fest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 08:25:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5121554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlbsurfinbird/pseuds/owlbsurfinbird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He'd read that the veils separating the human world from the spirit world were more permeable during Samhain. He wondered if she was haunting his little bookshop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Haunted Bookshop

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to wendymr, for beta reading, Brit-pick, and encouragment.

The tinkle of the shop bell above the door disturbed the slumber of the grey tabby. But the door did not open. The cat jumped off the counter, turned toward the door, and hissed before running toward the bookshelves.

"Hush, you," James said, without glancing up from his book. He suspected the door rattled due to draft or vibration. The bell rarely signaled a customer, not anymore. It was chilly beside the glass door. Currents of cold air swirled around the counter despite the balmy temperatures of the fall day outside.

Distracted, he wondered if he should bother putting up Halloween decorations in the shop window this year. Seemed pointless, really. The bookshop was on a side street with little foot traffic. But it had been a tradition. Holly at Christmas, hearts for Valentine's Day, eggs for Easter, spiders for Halloween.

He didn't care for spiders.

But he always hung up dangling black arachnids in windows strewn with orange spider web. A regular customer had once told him seasonal decorations were "festive" and "welcoming." The next day she was dead. Hit and run. Her picture had been in the paper. There had been holly and artificial snow decorating the window that Christmas ten years ago.

He'd left the holly up until after Valentine's Day that year, unable to take it down. He couldn't recall why. Not as though he knew the woman, only that she seemed to come in now and again looking for this and that.

Strange that he thought about her every Halloween. He'd read that the veils separating the human world from the spirit world were more permeable during Samhain. He wondered if she was haunting his little bookshop.

Not that he believed in ghosts. He smiled to himself, marking his page with a long finger as he hunted for scrap of paper to use as a bookmark. But he could do with the company, even the spiritual sort. The cat was nowhere in sight.

He ducked behind the counter, opening drawers: pencils, packages of soy sauce, rubber bands. Why didn't he have any scraps of paper?

The bell above the door tinkled. He ignored it, thinking the cat would hiss and that would be that.

He heard someone moving.

He cautiously peered over the counter, and rose slowly. A customer.

The man on the other side of the counter was wearing a dark grey suit and an older-style tie. He didn't seem old, but he seemed as grey as his suit. He wore a sort of wistful, almost hopeful, expression. He rubbed his ear. "Hello. Didn't know there was a bookshop down this way."

He had a Northern accent.

James nodded. "We're hard to find, but worth the trip."

The man smiled slightly, as if he were in on the joke. He glanced around. "Been here long? The shop, I mean."

"Fifteen, no, sixteen years? Family business." The man—the gentleman, James corrected himself, because he was convinced that this man was indeed a gentleman, if nothing else—seemed uneasy. Though that might have been the change in air temperature by the door. It was positively freezing. James was loathe to turn up the heat if the bloke was just browsing. He wanted to close up for the evening and head to the pub.

The man sighed, nodded, glanced toward the books. "Mind if I…?"

"Go right ahead." James shoved his hands into his pockets. "Anything I can help you find?"

"No. Well, I'm not sure, really. Are your books in order by subject?"

_What other order would they be in? Color order? Size?_ "Subject and then by author's surname."

The man edged into the stacks.

James wondered if the man would be like others who stumbled into the shop asking for a book: "I don't remember the title or the author or what it was about, but my friend had it on her coffee table and said I should read it. Supposed to be a great mystery. Do you have it?"

Or the customers who wanted a book that hadn't been released yet. Though once the Harry Potter series had ended those requests had become less frequent. And everyone had largely given up on the next George R.R. Martin book.

He hadn't stocked a new book in donkey's years. And he hadn't had a customer in the shop in so long he was almost anxious. His forehead was damp. He was suddenly aware that it was now warm here by the window in the waning sunlight of the day.

Maybe the door had finally closed properly so that there was no longer a draft. Something going right would be a pleasant surprise.

The cat jumped back onto the counter and nuzzled his hand. He scratched behind her ears. He caught himself before he whispered to the animal. Wouldn't do to have the man think he was so lonely he was talking to the damn cat about having a customer, the first one in two days. It sounded too pathetic.

Of course, the older man could be robbing him blind, filling secret suit pockets with dog-eared copies of old Josephine Tey paperbacks and the tattered dictionaries of foreign phrases. Not that he cared much about light-fingered customers.

The book he'd been reading was still splayed, spine up on the counter. A bookseller's sin, his aunt had called it, breaking the spine of a book just to keep it open.

Ah, he'd been looking for a bit of paper before all of the excitement. Sad to think of a single customer as exciting, though. He'd seen paper down there in the very back of the counter.

He ducked behind the counter again. He hated rummaging around down there (spiders) but he thought he'd seen a book wedged way behind his battered rucksack and the box of decorations on the bottom shelf. He pulled out the decorations, setting them aside. Can't have meant much to anyone, a book tucked back there for who knows how long. He got on his knees to reach to the back, groping blindly.

He pulled out a small, thin, dusty little dictionary. _English to Greek for the Traveller._

Oh.

_Oh._

It was her book. The woman's book.

The _dead_ woman's book. The one she'd been looking at. Said she'd come back to get it after Christmas. She was going to London to make arrangements for a holiday for her and her husband, she said. It's a surprise, she said. Save this for me, she said.

The slip of paper protruding from the book read: "Val."

James had never even looked at it. He'd just put it behind the counter. Sometimes people came back, more often they didn't. He hadn't given it a second thought.

He was holding it as the man came up and gave him a look. Gobsmacked.

"'Val'?" said the man on the other side of the counter. He looked like he was going to faint. His hand shook as he reached for the grubby book, his fingers streaking the cover. His eyes filled with tears.

The bell above the door tinkled. Currents of icy air whirled around the desk.

The cat jumped onto the counter and rubbed her head against the man's hand.

+++

"Ten years gone. Lyn told me her mum wanted to go to Greece again. Thought she might find a better price at a travel agent in London." Robbie wiped beneath his eye. "Said her mum planned to go to the shops to buy me a bloody tie as an excuse so I wouldn't know. It was going to be a surprise."

"I'm so sorry," James said. He looked down, wanting to give Robbie some space, though their table was toward the back of the mostly deserted pub. They had walked back along St. Giles toward the City Centre to go to the Bird and Baby, both of them lost in thought. James didn't know if there were any additional words of comfort he could offer; his customer, Robbie Lewis, seemed overwhelmed by the day's events.

"Woke up, thought I was having a heart attack. Freezing, like it was in the shop just now, and I had to get out of the house, had to find—do you know how many bloody bookshops there are in Oxford?"

"Thirty-four, no, thirty-one, counting all of the charity shops that sell books." Make that thirty, he wanted to add, since in another week he'd be shutting the doors to his aunt's little shop.

"Yours isn't listed." Robbie cradled his pint, shaking his head. "Knew in the back of my mind I had to find a bloody book _today_ and I had no idea of the title or the author or a damn thing about it."

James smiled to himself. "Good thing you found it. The building's been sold. All of the collectible books have been sent off. I need to pack up the remaining books at the weekend, cart them over to Oxfam."

"What will you do?"

James considered this. He didn't have many, well, _any_ friends anymore in Oxford. His first in theology from Cambridge was useless since he no longer wanted to be a priest. He had enough to live on until the end of the year. He didn't want to take on another degree. Might take on a fast track position, though. Become a detective. Put all of those hours reading mysteries to good use. "Thought I might become a police officer."

Robbie's eyes flashed. "Is this a wind up?"

"No. Why?"

He sat up straighter, rubbed his mouth, and paused. "I'm a copper, James. Over thirty years."

A shiver went down James's spine. "That's odd."

Robbie nodded. "It is." He raised his eyebrows, blowing out a puff of air. "Do you believe in fate?"

James sipped his ale. He didn't know what to say. He didn't want to alienate Robbie by speaking of God and His Divine Plan when he wasn't sure that he believed in God's plans any longer. So he shrugged, hoping that would be answer enough. He sure as hell didn't want to speak of ghosts haunting his bookshop.

He had so few friends as it was, and there was something about this fellow that was appealing.

Robbie seemed a little disappointed at James's silence. He sighed. "Well, in another week, I wouldn't have found your shop."

"It won't be missed."

"But, see, my daughter Lyn has been at me for years to retire, move up to Manchester. Every year I'd put her off. Every single year. This was the first year where I was ready to go. I'd even taken the day—today—to go over the financial business. Details mostly, moving house, and such." He leaned forward. "Instead, I go on a tear all over Oxford as if I'm hunting for the bleeding Snark in the bookshops."

James straightened his back and shoulders, half-expecting to hear a skeletal snap in his surprise. "Snark?"

"It's something you look for—"

"—But impossible to find. It's the looking that's important. Supposed to be the search for happiness and meaning in life. Yes, I know. I've read it."

"You—? Not a best-seller."

"Nope." James finished off his ale, and clasped his hands on the table. "So. What do you think you'll do, Robbie?" He had a hunch that something important was being decided here.

Robbie Lewis finished his ale and rubbed his mouth. "I think, if it's all right with you, I'd like to help you pack up your bookshop at the weekend. Maybe get to know you a little better."

James opened his mouth to demure, but he stopped. He wasn't sure why or how, only that he needed to learn more about Robbie Lewis. "That would be very kind of you. I could certainly use the help, though I can't afford to pay you."

"It would be my pleasure, man. Least I could do since you've been keeping a book set aside for me all these years."

"Could pay you in books, or perhaps pints, then." He smiled slightly. It wasn't every day you met another soul looking for the Snark.

"Then same again, James." Robbie Lewis slid his glass over. "Have to see if you have a book my neighbor recommended. Don't recall the author, but it's got a blue cover…"

James winced.

"…And the title is _A Storm of Swords._ "

James blew out a sigh of relief. "Don't even think about starting that series, Robbie. We've been waiting for years for a sequel to the last book."

Robbie met his eyes. "Took me ten years to find the book my wife was planning to give me. I reckon I'm a patient man."

"Have to be, to hunt the Snark."

"Tell you what, James. I'll get in this round and you can tell me about yourself. I'd like to know why you want to be a copper, for starters." Robbie rose, and grinned. He thumped the table with a knuckle. "I found what I was looking for, maybe I can help you find what you're looking for, too."

James smiled.


End file.
